Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Waiter, Tony Vrcic (left), discussing the menu of the day with father and daughter, James Felchlin (middle) and his daughter, Dare Felchlin (right). They are two long time customers. James has been coming since 1939 and Dare since 1989 when he brought his her there. Event on 8/23/05 in San Francisco. Craig Lee / The Chronicle

Photo: Craig Lee

Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Waiter, Tony Vrcic...

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Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. The Tadich Grill sign in front of the restaurant. Event on 8/23/05 in San Francisco. Craig Lee / The Chronicle

Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Waiter Barry Schwartz, serving at the bar during lunch. Busboy, Gabriel Lopez, at the far left. Event on 8/23/05 in San Francisco. Craig Lee / The Chronicle

Photo: Craig Lee

Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Waiter Barry...

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Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Photo of Tracy Prather, a waitress, writing down the menu specials of the day as chef Rajko Marin tells her what they are before the restaurant opens. Event on 8/23/05 in San Francisco. Craig Lee / The Chronicle

Photo: Craig Lee

Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Photo of Tracy...

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Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Photo of some of the chefs having lunch before the restaurant opens. Left-right: Adriano Dela Rosa, Jesus Rivas, and Romy Mandap. Event on 8/23/05 in San Francisco. Craig Lee / The Chronicle

Photo: Craig Lee

Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Photo of some of the...

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Tadich Grill restaurant, 240 California street. Photo of their dish called Hangtown Fry. The bacon are pieces cooked into the scrambled eggs.
Event on 9/23/05 in San Francisco. Craig Lee / The Chronicle

Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Photo of chef Rajko Marin, preparing for the lunch day early in the morning. He just finished making some pot roast. Event on 8/23/05 in San Francisco. Craig Lee / The Chronicle

Photo: Craig Lee

Story on Tadich Grill, 240 California Street. Photo of chef Rajko...

A grand old Grill / After 155 years, San Francisco's iconic restaurant still packs them in

At 1:30 p.m., on a recent Thursday, Sam Yates, a San Francisco financial consultant, sidles up to the 80-foot-long wood counter at Tadich Grill. Half the servers behind the bar greet him with a nod, a smile or a few words.

"What'll it be, Sam -- the Herb Caen martini or something lighter?" the bartender asks. Yates, who first visited Tadich 35 years ago, generally goes for a Herb Caen, made with vodka, or what Caen called Vitamin V.

Yates smooths his light gray suit jacket, fingers his polka-dotted bow tie and finally opts for the "something lighter," a glass of house white wine to sip before he moves down to the other end of the counter for lunch. The bartender pours the wine into Yates' personal chalice, an upside-down pewter bull's head that he leaves here for his regular weekly visits.

Yates is just one of many regulars at the 155-year-old Tadich, San Francisco's oldest restaurant, and reportedly, one of the city's oldest businesses.

There's nothing trendy about the place, which is known for its straightforward seafood dishes and unchanged facade, but that doesn't keep 600 to 800 people from showing up daily and waiting in line at this no-reservations, no-frills restaurant. At a time when many restaurants in San Francisco close after five or six years, according to the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, Tadich seems to have found the fountain of youth, a secret for staying fresh and vibrant for 155 years.

Crossing the threshold feels like walking into a men's club, with dark wood, brass accents and private booths that over the years have seen more than their share of deal-closing lunches and occasional indiscretions.

The menu of seafood, creamy casseroles and hearty stews may be the draw for many, but continuity and nostalgia is what brings most back day after day, week after week, year after year.

Every time Yates and other customers walk through the front door, they see waiters in crisp white jackets and black pants. Tourists and locals mingle effortlessly, digging into pan-fried rex sole at the packed 30-seat counter. .

Customers get classically prepared dishes with the California flair of locally sourced ingredients, like Dungeness crab and sand dabs. It's just the way they've always done it. Every day, chef Rajko Marin creates a list of specials based on what's available, usually fresh seafood.

"There are some people who come here every Tuesday for beef tongue," says owner Mike Buich. "There will be an exact list of customers who will come in because they know they can get that here."

Even if beef tongue isn't for everyone, Tadich is sure to have fresh oysters, fried crisp, topped with cheese, and spinach a la Rockefeller or cooked into a casserole. The briny sweet smell of the fresh oysters being hurriedly shucked in the back is intoxicating, and cioppino, grilled steak and broiled fish are ever-popular.

"There's a novelty to tradition in today's society," says Buich. And for Buich, running the restaurant is based on a tradition. The Buich family has owned Tadich since 1928, when they bought it from John Tadich, who had purchased and renamed the place in 1887.

Buich started working at the restaurant when he was 9, peeling shrimp and busing dishes. He says he was delighted that this year his 14-, 16- and 17-year-old daughters worked regular rotations at the restaurant during their summer vacation.

"It's important for them to see the world before settling into the family business," says Buich. "Especially when they are teenagers, for crying out loud."

Tagging along with Tadich's staff on a recent Thursday shows what a grueling schedule it is. Although customers aren't seated until 11 a.m., the day begins six hours earlier. At 5 a.m., it's eerily quiet. Marin sets out to heat up several large stockpots on the small stove, pausing only to take sips from his coffee cup, perched above the line on the neat sterling-silver shelves; there's no room for clutter on the line.

Deliveries are due by 9, and as they come in, Marin and his small team check each one. Together they decide which specials -- there will be 15 -- they'll offer, and to make sure the fresh ingredients are there for the regular dishes.

Everyone knows that in five hours this false calm will be gone and these same four cooks will be doing a line dance in front of the stoves, with one person making salad, one working the grill and fryer, and the other two running the saute pans. It's cramped, but the cooks have learned the choreography.

"What you'll see at Tadich is that the chef is not an administrative manager," says Buich, which is the case at many other restaurants. "He is butchering fish, making stocks and soups and anything else that needs to get done."

In the Tadich kitchen, no fewer than eight large stockpots bubble away at once. One is a zesty bordelaise sauce, simmering to a thick reduction, for seafood ravioli. Another pot holds a rich, creamy lobster sauce for moistening the lobster- and crab-stuffed mushrooms, one of the specials that day. Later, Marin will show his sous chef how thin he wants the veal chops pounded to stuff with spinach, sausage and onions -- another special.

The sauces can't be finished without fresh herbs, but by 9 a.m. the produce hasn't been delivered. The kitchen takes it in stride, Marin mumbling a bit about rearranging the prep work to accommodate the tardiness. The herbs finally show up an hour and a half later.

Tadich wasn't always so dependent on the will of truck deliveries. Now-retired Steve Buich, Mike's father, remembers when the restaurant was in a previous location on Clay Street, an area at that time home to many markets,

"The restaurant was surrounded by produce, fish and meat people. They just had to push a cart around to get ingredients," Steve Buich recalls.

Tadich moved from Clay Street in 1967, after Wells Fargo bought up the street for redevelopment, and markets were making way for office buildings. Tadich was the last holdout on the block.

Steve Buich takes pride in being instrumental in that move. He searched for a contractor who understood the construction job, about how the new space, which is one-third larger than the original, needed to look the same. "At the time they were really into Art Deco," he says. "I found an old-timer who actually copied all the moldings and woodwork and moved the original bar over" along with all the fixtures.

When they reopened a month later, Buich recalls a standing ovation from the customers at the end of service. " 'We're back home,' they chanted. We were shocked."

Forty years later, barely anything has changed. One exception -- a modern dishwasher tucked underneath the bar for washing glasses to relieve the staff from washing and polishing the glasses by hand.

"We used to buy 250 pounds of sand dabs," says Marin, who has worked at Tadich on and off for 25 years. "It was all local customers, so they knew what it was. Now with the tourists and younger generations, they don't want fish with bones." Tadich now buys about 50 pounds a day. The restaurant serves a few non-local items, but not many. Prawns are the only frozen fish. Sea bass comes in once a month and always sells out, but Marin doesn't like offering it because, he says, "it's not nice to sell." He is concerned about overfishing.

The chef chats while he works, until the hour before lunch when he gets quieter and intently finishes sauces.

"We used to open the door, and the line was out the door and around the corner," says Marin, who remembers the days when they would serve 1,000 customers. "Now, there are so many restaurants and delis where people can just grab a sandwich. They don't want to wait to sit." Nevertheless, Tadich serves 700 meals a day.

Around 10:30 a.m., the seven servers trickle in, and start to set tables, booths and bar seats with cloth napkins and bowls of sliced lemons. Seniority isn't an issue -- servers rotate sections daily so that each get a chance at a good section, like the booths, where there may be better tipping, or the counters where the seats turn quickly.

At about the same time, one of the cooks tosses a charcoal bag on the grill; the bag ignites from the embers that are still burning from the night before. Tadich helped popularize grilling; in a day the kitchen can go through four 40-pound bags of mesquite charcoal.

Tadich's use of mesquite dates back to 1925, when Louie Buich, Steve's father, suggested using the mesquite broiler for fish, as was done in his native Croatia. Mesquite could cook fish quickly and add nuances of flavor without overpowering the fish itself. The technique instantly became one of their most popular preparations, remaining so for the next 80 years, through an astonishingly low turnover of seven chefs.

At 11 a.m., it's lunch time. The doors open, and waiting customers scramble inside. The cooks take their places and the line starts to move, sizzling pans releasing aromas of garlic, onion and oregano.

Customers who get here early may be privy to the best seats. There are no reservations -- not for anyone, including ex-mayor Willie Brown, a regular customer who dropped in for a late lunch of fried oysters.

For business lunches, the tables and booths go quickly, but you can't get one unless you're a party of three or more. For prime people-watching, the counter is tops; part of it is also close to the action of the open kitchen.

At least a quarter of the customers are regulars. Banker Andy Jeremi comes in two to three times a month to get his fix of pan-fried petrale sole.

He always brings visitors to Tadich, too, he says -- after all, the grill is older than Coit Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge.

And while Tadich is a destination for many tourists, for others it's become the reason for visiting San Francisco itself.

Tom Tripiano and his wife come down from Oregon six times a year to see the Giants play and to eat at Tadich. On this afternoon, though, the Tripianos went to Swan Oyster Depot instead, thinking the change would do them good. But, halfway through standing in line there, they changed their minds.

"My wife looked at me and said, 'Do you really want to do this?' No, I didn't. So we took off and came here."

They've inspired the next generation, too -- their son, who lives in Mountain View, comes to Tadich for celebrations with friends.

"We even brought home cocktail napkins so we can think about being at Tadich when we aren't here," says Mary Tripiano. "Tadich is just so San Francisco."

Adapted from "Tadich Grill: The Story of San Francisco's Oldest Restaurant" (Ten Speed Press, 2002).

INGREDIENTS:

2 slices bacon

4 large oysters, shucked

1/2 cup breadcrumbs

1 tablespoon butter

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 tablespoon kosher salt, or to taste

1/2 tablespoon cracked black pepper

3-4 dashes Tabasco sauce

INSTRUCTIONS:

In an 8-inch nonstick saute pan, fry bacon until crisp. Transfer to paper towels to drain.

Dredge the oysters in the breadcrumbs and shake off any excess. Pour the bacon fat out of the saute pan. Add the butter and melt over medium heat. Add the oysters and saute until they just plump up, about 1 minute on each side. Crumble the bacon and add it to the pan, tossing with the oysters. Season the eggs with salt, pepper and Tabasco. Pour the eggs into the pan and cook for about 3 minutes, until the eggs are almost set, lifting the edges of the cooked eggs to let the uncooked eggs run underneath. Carefully flip the frittata over and cook for about 2 minutes longer, or until the second side is set. Transfer to a plate and serve immediately.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Place the fillets in a bowl and sprinkle the flour evenly over them. Toss gently to coat evenly. Pour the egg into the bowl and season with salt and pepper. Toss gently again (with your hands) until mixed thoroughly.

Place a large saute pan over medium-high heat. When hot, add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan evenly. When the oil is hot, add 1 fillet and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, until the underside is light golden brown. Turn the fillet over and cook the second side for 2 to 4 minutes, until opaque and firm. Remove any browned or burned particles of flour from the pan and again add oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Repeat with remaining fillets, transferring them to a warmed serving dish in a very low oven as each is completed.

Drain off the excess oil from the pan. Add the wine and heat for 2 seconds, still over medium-high heat. Stir in the lemon juice, parsley and butter. Stir or swirl the mixture for 2 to 3 minutes as it foams, until the sauce begins to thicken. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve immediately.